Top o' the morning to you!

Happy St Patricks day everyone from Dublin, Ireland - Home (for today at least), of all things green and gorgeous. Today I awoke early and got stuck into a "traditional"Irish breakfast, which was put on by my friend Gudi and his friends. It was a massive breakfast with so much food that we actually managed to have a traditional Irish lunch out if it as well!

After breakkie we headed to the St Patricks Day parade along the main street. After much looking for various vantage points, we ended up standing on the base of Daniel O'Connell. This proved to be an interesting vantage point as people who ad climbed higher and were sitting on the statues were told to move along by the police. As things became more and more crowded more idiots decided they would try and climb the statue, including a group of 3 Romanian guys who were firmly stood down by a group of (admittedly rather nasty) 12 year girls. Another bunch left after we told them the police arrested the people who were sitting there before, and that they were now getting their confessions beaten out of them at the local Gaol. The last guy to try was politely told where to go, and nearly got the "stop touching me like that!" treatment loudly yelled at him by one of the crowd to help move him on. It would have been hilarious to see him skelter off!

So how was the parade? Well, not very Irish, since the theme was multi-culturalism! I didn't know that fish, dinosaurs and sea creatures counted as multicultural, but we also saw plenty of American University marching bands (which were actually quite impressive for their size), a motley crew of Irish Soldiers (the height difference between each of them was remarkable and bizarre), and various other bands including the Scots who got lost and ended up in Ireland instead of home. We watched up to the Sikhs, who were quite impressive, but then we decided we had had enough as the whole thing wasn't particular Irish and it started to get repetitive.

After the parade we went off to a pub where we watched Ireland hammer Italy by 51 to 24 (or thereabouts). Unfortunately France spoiled this victory and ended up winning the six nations. Then off on a long walk to do some Irish dancing in the streets - not that we really knew what we were doing but it was good fun anyway.

So now its raining hard - apparently it is a national law that it must rain on St Paddy's Day. Of course it rains here every 2nd day anyway so chances are that "law" is rarely broken.

But there has been some remarkable news today for Ireland - they firstly not only beat Pakistan in their Cricket World Cup game, but they also bundled one of the favourites out of the competition before the first week of the cup was over!! Quite how Ireland (who I never knew played cricket until the world cup came along) actually beat Pakistan is anyones guess. I'm sure allegations of match fixing will abound. Its happened before. For those of you who know nothing about cricket, this would be akin to New Zealand coming out and beating a top 5 Ice Hockey team. It is almost completely unprecedented.

I say almost because there was another upset also tonight - Bangladesh beat India! Now India and Cricket are like Canada and Hockey, Ireland and Guinness, England and the Queen, American and guns. Cricket is India's passion and pride, a hugely popular sport. Bangladesh is a little better than Ireland at Cricket, at least they have played in a few world cups, and they are one of the main Test match playing games (again for non cricketers - a test match is a game of cricket that is played for 5 days - the world cup games are just one day each). But Bangladesh are routine bottom of the barrel and generally a tour of Bangladesh is considered practice. That said they did beat New Zealand in a warm up game, so maybe they do have a bit of hidden flair about them. I hope they do well anyway as they are a country that deserves it.

So the world cup is now wide open. It looks like many of the top teams may struggle to get through, while teams that were just making up the numbers like Ireland, Bangladesh and perhaps Kenya (if they can pull of a win against England), may go through to the super eight series. Its turning out to be an awesome cricket world cup. Now I wish was there!